Cancer treatment is very stressful experience that can overwhelm a schoolchild’s natural ability to cope.
The emotional trauma school age children experience can delay healing and normal development. The negative effects on physical and mental health may last for years after treatment has ended.
Child life promotes effective coping for school age children.
Developmental Issues
- Develops concrete thinking
- Heavily involved with peers
- Concerns about body image
- Increased participation in self-care
- Active learners, invent and design things
- Well-developed language skills and concept of time
Hospital Stressors
- Fears pain
- Fears death
- Fears anaesthetic
- Loss of competence
- Loss of bodily control
- Enforced dependence
- Fears body mutilation and deformities
- Fears loss of bodily functions and/or body parts
Coping Behaviours
- Acting out
- Regression
- Depression
- Withdrawal
- Cognitive mastery
- Guilt (better able to test reality of situation, although fantasies have not entirely disappeared)
Interventions
- Give child tasks to help
- Respect child’s modesty
- Offer choices when possible
- Identify and correct misconceptions
- Encourage child participation in care
- Teach coping strategies that encourage mastery
- Give specific information about the affected body part
- Help child recognize aspects of their effective coping
- Provide age-appropriate activities that foster a sense of accomplishment
Pain Management / Comforting Techniques
- Music
- Videos
- Singing
- Humour/Jokes
- Deep breathing
- Favourite object
- Comfort Positioning
- Encouraging statements